The stock market got clobbered today. The Dow closed down 246.79 points, or 1.92%. Thanks to the presence of ProShares inverse ETFs in my portfolio, I managed to close up .39%. Not a lot, but much better than any of the major indices. The only one of my long postitions  that was up was POT, a fertilizer company. (Lots of opportunities for jokes ( Read more... )

The stock market was up today, and I sold yet another put on DIA just in time to make a small profit. I think I need to be happy with small profits for a while. I am about $200 away from losing the maximum amount I allowed myself, so I need to make trades that are sure things (or as close as possible to that) and take profits while they are still ( Read more... )

Yesterday I sold my DIA put for a small profit. Today the dow went down even further, and if I'd waited I would  have made a much larger profit.
In short, I repeated the mistake I beat myself up for so relentlessly less than a month ago. I am posting a video which expresses my feelings about my failure to learn in song

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As I write this ,DIA has fallen below 135, which is less than the strike price on the put I purchased. This means it is now in the money. To celebrate, I am posting this video.

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    I sold my KB Homes put today for a small profit. I know, I was beating up on myself for doing the same thing with a DIA put earlier. I just don't have the intestinal fortitude to let my winners run when I am trading options.

I still have my current DIA put. It is still down from my purchase price, but I'm going to be patient. No, that's a lie. ( Read more... )

All the major indices closed down, and my trading portfolio closed up 1.01%. In fact, my entire E-trade account was up. (Full disclosure: my IRA account has a lot of mutual funds that reflected yesterdays up market.)

Monday I  made three purchases, all of which contributed to my account's increase. I had a bad case of sellers remorse with PAS, ( Read more... )

Damn damn damn. Double dog damn!

Yesterday I said I was "kicking myself a little" for selling my DIA put too early. Today I am kicking myself a LOT. The Dow is down 240 points and if I had hung in there I would be up $145 more today.

Normally I am not hard on myself for being too risk averse. Not for any silly self-esteem reasons, but because beating ( Read more... )

Yesterday I made my second profitable options transaction. I sold a December DIA put I had bought and cleared 44 dollars.
I am kicking myself a little, because today the Dow went down even further, and I could have made a lot more money if I'd held out. I might be too much of a nervous nellie to trade options.

I sold PAS (Pepsi Americas) yesterday, ( Read more... )

I got permissions to trade options in my E-Trade account at the end of July, and as the title of this entry suggests, have been doing it badly for about three weeks now. I always brag when I beat the market, so in the interest of full disclosure  I should also  post about my failures.

I am about $400 in the hole right now after 4 trades. I am trying ( Read more... )

I actually beat it yesterday as well, but my portfolio was down. It just wasn't as far down as the Dow was. I didn't think that was enough to crow about.

Today I actually had a positive return, when the market was down  and the Dow was ending it's worst week in 5 years.  I was up .54% , while the Dow was down 1.54%. My return was largely due to the ( Read more... )